Tewksbury

This page shows some of the effects resulting from various lighting conditions, including flash lighting indoors, natural light through windows, and low contrast vs high contrast natural lighting outdoors.

Value of a Good Flash Unit When first using a flash for low light pictures, the "red eye" effect was more than annoying, since the color could not be digitally removed from the pictures. Experiments with a Vivitar 635 flash system, shown on the right, quickly demonstrated the value of bouncing flash light from walls. The unit's camera mounted flash meter tshuts off the flash unit when the correct amount of light has been received.

Bounce Flash Lighting Indoors The two pictures below illustrate the results obtained with an indoor shot, bouncing the light from multiple walls to illuminate the person. The picture below on the left is a picture of my mother: the flash was bounced off multiple walls behind me. The photo on the right is of my daughter Lauren when she was young. In this case, the flash was bounced off the wall to the right of the photo image, providing higher contrast. Once seeing the value of bounce flash rather than red-eye producing direct flash, red-eye became even more annoying in pictures.


Natural Light Through Window The second approach learned quickly is that natural lighting can be very effective for indoor pictures when using light coming through a window. This can be very sharp if the sun is in the view of the subject or diffused if (white) curtains are closed. The photo below shows the effect of sharp light coming through a window. This is my son Geoff at a very young age, not complaining about the situtation. The directionality of the light leads to the dark background. This natural black background was the result of the high contrast between the lit areas and the shaded areas in the room.	Cloudy Day Light Another approach known since taking my first pictures (the result of many quite bad pictures) is that cloudy or overcast days provide a uniform light source, avoiding the high contrast from sunny days. Even with such cloudy/overcast days, the light should be behind the subject. The picture below (my wife, Charla, taken while we were at Brookhaven Labs), shows the effect of such gentle lighting (as opposed to the contrasty lighting shown in the other examples.


High Contrast Outdoor Light In bright outdoors sunlight, the high contrast can lead to interesting results, as in the photo below. Taken in the southwest US, the very bright light on the rocks and my daugher contrasts with the shaded areas (which end up appearing black in the final image due to exposure limits of the film).